Garrett Crochet was supposed to be the one thing holding this mess together.
That’s gone now too.
The Red Sox officially placed Crochet on the IL on April 29 — retroactive to April 26 — with shoulder inflammation. The MRI came back clean, no structural damage, earliest return around May 11. Which is the one piece of news that isn’t a complete catastrophe, but at this point the bar is so low we’re celebrating “nothing is torn.” Congrats to us, I guess. The team made it official:
The #RedSox today placed LHP Garrett Crochet on the 15-Day Injured List (retroactive to April 26) with left shoulder inflammation. To fill his spot, Boston recalled INF/OF Nate Eaton from Triple-A Worcester.
— Red Sox (@RedSox) April 29, 2026
What makes this so infuriating isn’t just that Crochet is hurt. It’s that he was already bad before he got hurt. A 6.30 ERA. Velocity declining all spring. He acknowledged he’d lost arm strength during the spring — said it out loud, to reporters — and the team ran him out there anyway until his shoulder said no. For a rotation that has no real depth behind him, losing your ace when your ace was already struggling is a special kind of awful.
And then there’s the offense. The offense that was already dead before Crochet went down. NBC Sports Boston reported the Red Sox have scored just 145 runs through 36 games — fewest in the American League. Their team OPS sits at .679, 27th in baseball. Slugging at .361, 28th. These aren’t bad numbers. These are historically bad numbers. This team doesn’t have a single bat that scares anyone.
The roster construction here deserves a real examination, because Craig Breslow has already said the quiet part loud — “accountability for the roster falls on me” — so let’s hold him to it. He let Alex Bregman walk to the Cubs because he wouldn’t agree to a no-trade clause. A legitimate middle-of-the-order third baseman, gone over a clause that dozens of players have. In his place, the Red Sox signed Caleb Durbin as a “stopgap” — Durbin is currently one of the worst hitters in baseball by wRC+, with Trevor Story keeping him company at the bottom. The outfield logjam that existed all winter was never resolved. And when Boston broke camp, they were the only team in MLB with zero hitters projected to hit 20 home runs. Not one. The front office looked at that and said “we can compete.” They were wrong about everything.
The 145-run number has real context: that pace projects to under 660 runs over a full 162-game season. The 2024 Red Sox scored 765. The offense didn’t regress — it collapsed.
Alex Cora got fired after a 10-17 start, which was the right call but also a convenient redirect. We wrote at the time that firing the manager doesn’t fix the roster, and nothing since has proven otherwise. Interim manager Chad Tracy is 4-4 since taking over. That’s not improvement, that’s noise. The problems are baked in.
And look — none of this is a surprise if you’ve been paying attention since the Devers trade broke this team’s identity. That was the moment it became clear the front office had a different vision for this roster than the fans did. What we’re watching now is that vision failing in real time.
The team is 15-21. Their best pitcher is hurt and was already bad. Their offense is historically anemic. Their manager got fired six weeks in. Breslow has owned the accountability out loud, which is admirable in a “at least you know you drove into the ditch” kind of way.
May 11 can’t come fast enough. And when Crochet comes back, maybe he’s healthy, maybe the velocity is back, maybe something clicks. But this offense isn’t going to score. And a clean MRI doesn’t fix a broken roster.
